Newsletter Archive

Issue 18 : Autumn 2004

Dr.
Deborah Swallow, New Director

Dr. Deborah Swallow, the newly appointed
Director of the Courtauld Institute took up her duties at the beginning
of the Autumn term, 2004. She succeeds Prof. James Cuno, who has become
the Director of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Dr. Deborah Swallow
Dr. Swallow read English at New Hall, University of Cambridge, and gained
her PhD in Social Anthropology at Darwin College, Cambridge. From 1974-1983,
whilst being an assistant curator at the University Museum of Archaeology
and Anthropology, she was Lecturer and Director of Studies in Anthropology
at Girton College and was also Fellow of Darwin College.

Since 1983, she has served as Assistant Keeper, Acting Keeper, and Chief
Curator of the Victoria and Albert Museums Indian Department, and
Senior Chief Curator of the Museum. Most recently, as Director of Collections,
she has had strategic responsibilities including acquisitions, research,
assistant curator training, regional policy and outreach, and national
and international relations. As Keeper, Dr. Swallow was responsible for
the management of the Asian Department.

Dr. Swallow is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a member of the
Advisory Board of the Nehru Centre (High Commission of India) and an Executive
Trustee for the Nehru Trust for the Indian Collections at the V& A.
She is a specialist in the history of the relationships between British,
Indian and South-East Asian textiles and dress, and in the ways sectarian
and cult affiliation have been expressed through the patronage of art
and the endowment of religion, both in its built and material forms and
as ceremonial and ritual performance. She has published widely on these
subjects.

Of Dr. Swallow, Nicholas Ferguson, Chairman of the Governing Board of
the Courtauld Institute said, "Dr, Swallow brings to the Courtauld
the right combination of skills and experience to lead us into the future.
She is a proven leader and committed to the highest standards in teaching
and research."

Before she took up her post as Director, I had a conversation with Deborah
Swallow about her attitudes to art, history, and her experience, both
professional and academic, which makes her such an exciting appointment
at a time when the Courtauld Institute faces fundamental questions about
its role in art and cultural history.

" 'Woman museum curator, with non-art-historical background,
with oriental expertise becomes director of western-oriented art-historical
university. You would seem to be an unusual choice to supervise
the next period at the Courtauld."

"I have worked in contexts where being a woman is not an issue. Anthropology
at Cambridge was peopled with leading lights who were women, and that
has been the case since the 1930s. At the V & A. I never had
a sense of a distinction between male and female. It is a balanced institution
which had a female director for several years. On a personal level, a
feminine slant is not at the forefront of my consciousness.

"As to a non-art-historian — the Courtauld may seem to have
taken a brave step! My first degree was in English literature, my next
social anthropology. Approaches to the study of the non-western material
world in anthropology have become much closer to those of the art historical
world and both disciplines have learned hugely from each other. My anthropological
colleagues might see my writing recently as art history. There is no dilemma
there for me.

"Much of my non-western interest in recent years has been related
to the interplay between east and west, and to the impact on India of
western art and architecture in the 19th and 20th centuries. Amongst other
things, I have collected work by modern artists from the Indian sub-continent
for the V & A. In the 20th and 21st centuries it is impossible to
treat these as isolated traditions.

"I have discovered that Courtauld already relates to traditions beyond
Europe and the Western world. The work of the Research Forum has a broad
range. So do the exhibitions in the Hermitage Rooms. Aspects of the work
of several of the staff of the Institute reach into the middle eastern
traditions, and the Roman expansion into the larger near-eastern world.
Issues facing European medievalists have direct parallels in other parts
of the world. From the other end, archaeology has been finding further
evidence of Roman trade into India, and studies of the Greco-Roman influence
in Gandhara in north-west Pakistan have led to increasingly sophisticated
discussion about indigenous and imported traditions and the social contexts
of stylistic transmission through west central Asia and Iran to mainland
Greece. I would argue that we need to move beyond a view of the world,
which simply counter-poses East and West. They are all interconnected
in multiple ways. The same disciplines, applied with the same intellectual
rigour, are required for their study.

"I feel privileged to be joining an institution with such a great
reputation, with its outstanding scholars and students, with the exceptional
benefit of a superb collection under its care and with its promise of
a dynamic future. I look forward to strengthening established relationships
and to initiating new partnerships between the Courtauld Institute and
other institutions of artistic endeavour."